


The dream of silence

by Talvi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, Boarding School, Bullying, Deaf, Deaf Character, Deaf John Watson, Deaf Sherlock Holmes, Horror, Kidnapping, M/M, Medical Torture, Panic Attacks, Private School, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talvi/pseuds/Talvi
Summary: John Watson becomes deaf as a child. Rejected by his mother he is sent to a boarding school for deaf kids. There he would meet a very interesting kid, crazy smart and charming in every way with whom he will stablish a strong friendship and more.But everyone has secrets and Sherlock Holmes is, for sure, no ordinary person. He was born deaf and he thinks that the world would be a much better place if everyone would be a bit more empathetic. But maybe his methods to make sure people understand their way of seeing the world are a bit controversial..or.John becomes deaf and meets Sherlock, who has what it seems to a master plan for a different world, he does believe life would be better if everyone were deaf, even if it meant it wold have to do it by his own methods.
Relationships: John Watson/Original Female Character(s), Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The dream of silence

**Author's Note:**

> This was an original work in spanish.
> 
> We will see John throughout his teen years in his new school.

People always say that things happen for a reason, that there is a reason behind things. And that when things happen they make other things happen. Or something. But for John Watson, at 10 years old of age it was a difficult concept. Like that time when his favorite ball got lost, the one that his mother gave him for Christmas, the last Christmas before his father left with another woman he met on the other side of the world. The ball got lost and now what? They bought him another one. Maybe when that one gets lost someone else would leave. Who would had said it was going to be him.

John was born… well of course he wouldn’t remember that. Nobody does. He could think he knew when it could all be a story made up by the adults around him. Maybe he was born on November 5th at noon or November 6th at night, but in the end it was all the same because maybe that weekend his grandfather had more than one glass of wine and his grandmother said to leave it there. Anyway, he was born on the day that read on his birth certificate, and he was born in a place that had everything. Seriously everything. At 8, he had everything he could dream of. His father was absent but his mother had always been “ambitious”, in her own words, which was another way of saying that she was going to work all day and John and his sister will usually be under the eye of a nanny. John’s sister was called Harriet and she was ten years older. She was in her teenager years when his ball got lost and she helped him looked through the entire neighborhood until it became dark. John couldn’t remember his birth but he remembered moments like that. His house was beautiful and over the years he could understand it because when he was young it was just a big house, big enough for two children being children. They used to play as if they were in a castle, the right hand of a powerful King, both prepared to go to war, since Harry was never a princess type of girl. Beautiful and big house for only three members of the family and a woman who used to clean and cook, whose name John didn’t know until he was 7. Susan, that was her name, used to keep small secrets from their mom, like Harry hiding insects on her bedroom or the time John tried to make some eggs and they ended up on the floor and for that John sometimes helped her with the dishes when it was too late at night. Once he heard her on the phone in her bedroom and she seemed to be crying, saying something about a girl or a woman. She hanged up and grabbed something from her table, knelt next to the bed and started whispering something with her eyes closed. Harry told him, months later, that Susan’s sister had died and that she was praying to God. John’s mother didn’t believe in God so he had no idea how could Susan be talking to him, but he figured that, while he had Harry to talk to in case something happened, Susan had no one, so it was alright if she wanted to talk to the ceiling. Or to God.

Big house, housekeeper, nanny, toys, clothes, games, mother working the whole day. And the city was a vivid reflection of that itself: children in uniforms from expensive private schools, mothers and fathers in black suits and expensive cars. Those were John’s first years until her sister started to attend artistic venues on her teenage years. She wanted to be a poet, but for sure their mother would have preferred a painter, since they could sell better. But Harry wanted to be a poet, writing metaphors that were impossible for John to understand but poems that were praised by her teacher and made her win the poetry award at their school two years in a row. In the afternoons, Harry told John how she wanted to change things, she wanted to travel the world, visit Europe, India, and write a poem walking on The Great Wall in China. John listened, a young child trying to understand that there was a whole world he didn’t know but it was there, waiting to be discovered. The world was out there and it was a lot more than what he knew, it was, for example, Harry told him, children who didn’t have enough to eat every day, children who didn’t get new clothes every month. 

“Mom, if we have so much, why is there people who have nothing?”

But even when he asked, John’s mother never gave him answers to those questions; she actually never even tried to. Harry was now in her last year in school and very aware of those things but John was starting to understand and suffer for things he couldn’t really change and when he voice that out his mother just told him to shut up an finish dinner. He could read Harry’s poems and some time later he started to understand them. That was when she brought him with her to poetry slams and different artistic events where John met new and different people, people who were very different from what he knew, people who talked about breaking paradigms (whatever that meant), changing the system and revolution. He didn’t quite get it until Harry mentioned the word “inequality” during dinner. Their mother pretended not to hear, she knew her daughter would start college the next year and soon she would become a successful lawyer and every idea about revolution would stay in the past.  
John’s school offered him a variety of options. He spent his childhood there, having fun with his classmates, only the boys, he was not so sure about spending time with girls even when Harry assured him he would change his mind in no time. He had several classes, from the usual to different types of dance, experimental drama, swimming pool all year around and classic music as a must. He really didn’t care; he just cared for playing football during recess.

Harry got into college quite easily. She still lived at home and John found out that every Friday she still attended poetry slams. 

One Saturday afternoon, both brother and sister were hanging out in a park, having ice cream in a particularly hot day.

“Harry…”

“Yes?”

“Is it nice? College?”

“Well… it is hard, even now that I’ve just started. But I have to read a lot”

“But you like to read”

“I like to read other things”

“Like those books about space travel”

“Yeah… and adventure and fantasy and horror books.”

“And you don’t get to read that at college?”

“No, there they tell you what to read and none of that is about zombies in space”

“That sucks”

“Yes, they all should be about zombies in space”

“Fighting with laser blades!”

“That’s not from a book! that’s a movie!”

Harry read a lot. John was more of a movie guy, and the type of kid who would love to spend the weekend playing football. Harry was obsessed with the books of The Lord of The Rings, and even when John tried to pay attention whenever she talked to him about it and the wonderful adventures, the way the good guys defeated the evil forces after enormous battles in what it seemed to be a never ending war, he found it boring every time. He still listened, loving the passion she had for things. John himself felt more like nothing really cared, he was just a kid trying to get through primary school.

Harriet was a poet and an excellent student. Every teacher loved her, always so dedicated to study, so involved in class. John was not a good student, neither was he a terrible one; he had a few friends who enjoyed his company and overall was not much interesting to anyone. Harry used to tell him that once he was a teenager and in secondary school, he would find true friends who would stay with him for years because those were the years when one becomes a real person, when one discovers themselves and what one wants in life. Sure, John used to think, sure, Harry.

John’s 10th birthday seemed like a big thing for him, probably because Harry had turned 20 a few months ago, but that didn’t matter, he too wanted to have a big party saying that now he was closer to be a teenager than a child, it did meant something in his little head. He wanted to be like Harry who used to buy CD’s and locked herself in her room to listen to music for hours. John just turned on the radio and danced to whatever song was playing. So he asked his mom for a pool party with everyone from John’s class, including the girls. She said yes and he was over excited. That day, a Saturday, his best friends Matt and Daniel came first and left last. Everyone talked about the party the whole week and John enjoyed every present, from collectable figures of Doctor Who to new video games. Harry invited a friend from college and they spent the day drinking beer by the pool. John’s mom talked to other parents, but mostly about Harriet, her prodigy daughter and how well she was doing in college. Sure thing, she didn’t talk that much about John. Some relatives came to the party too but they only stayed for an hour, after leaving a envelope with money next to the pile of presents, carefully watched by Harry.

That party was probably the only good memory he had of that year. Sometimes he wondered what could have been of his life if every day continued to be just like that Saturday.

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter is only to introduce the world were John used to live.  
> More to come.


End file.
